Every figure here is a reading, not a fact.

No census exists. Figures split on geography (whole Copperbelt vs Lualaba-only) and on whether they count diggers or everyone at a site (one mapping reaches ~430,000 counting all roles). But the deepest problem is provenance: the only real head-counts (Öko-Institut, BGR) land near 67,000–110,000, while the famous 150k–255k figures are either untraceable round numbers or back-calculations from a child-labour ratio. The loudest numbers are the least measured.

Every figure here is two estimates stacked: a soft miner count multiplied by an assumed family size. The multiplier alone ranges from 4× to 6×. Nobody counts dependents directly.

There is only one number, and it does not mean what it is used to mean. The "40,000 children mining cobalt" repeated in press and lawsuits is a single 2014 UNICEF estimate for children in all artisanal mining across southern DRC — all minerals. No measured count of children mining cobalt specifically has ever been made.

These numbers are barely comparable. Some are net cash in hand, others gross; they come from different sites and cooperatives; and above all they straddle the cobalt price cycle — the same hour of digging paid several times more at the 2018 peak than in the 2024 slump. Within a single study the spread runs from under a dollar to over fifty.

This is a documented blank. The only solid anchor (40%) is all-mineral, all-roles. Women in cobalt mostly wash, sort and carry rather than dig, so they fall out of "digger" counts entirely — and no one has published a cobalt-specific share.

A thirty-fold gap, and it is pure method. The World Bank counts only press-reported deaths (a known floor); Kara scales up from questionnaires (a disputed ceiling). No mortality register exists, and every source agrees the real toll is undercounted.

Most of this spread is real change over time: the DRC's share genuinely climbed from ~64% to 76% as new industrial mines came online. The rest is basis (mine output vs export-quota period) and rounding (the IEA's 70% vs USGS's 76%). This is one of the better-measured numbers on the page — and it still moves twenty points depending on the year you pick.

This is the most contested number on the page, and the best lesson in why a figure needs a year stamped on it. Artisanal supply is extremely price-elastic: ~20–40% at the 2018 peak, under 2% by 2024. The famous "20%" (Amnesty, 2016) and "12%" (RAID, 2022) are pre-collapse figures still circulating as if current. ASM cobalt is also informal and mixed into industrial streams, so every reading is an estimate.

Estimated versus projected (USGS estimates conservatively; Benchmark and GlobalData project higher), mine versus refined basis, and calendar lag between 2023 and 2024 numbers. A frequent trap: world totals (~238–290 kt) get mis-read as DRC alone. CMOC's two DRC sites produced ~114 kt in 2024, so any DRC figure below ~150 kt is implausible.

Two things move this: periodic USGS revisions (DRC reserves were lifted to 6 Mt), and the reserves-versus-resources confusion. World cobalt resources run to ~25 Mt — a far larger denominator than the ~11 Mt of reserves — so "half of reserves" and "half of resources" are different claims often blurred together.

This is the rare figure that IS measured — traded daily on the LME — and it is still useless as a fixed fact. It roughly halved and doubled within five years. Watch two traps: 2018 and 2022 were both "peaks" (different years, different highs), and metal, hydroxide and LME-cash are distinct price series quoted interchangeably. Even an assayed number expires.

These four numbers measure four different things — government tax take, gross export value, and total world market size — that get conflated constantly. Price volatility then swings any tonnage's value two- or three-fold year to year. And the artisanal slice has no value series at all: ASM cobalt is informal and mixed into industrial exports, so nobody prices it separately.

The gap here is mostly definitional: "EVs" (43%) are a subset of "all batteries" (76%), and the battery share is genuinely rising year to year. The classic trap sits just off this chart — the USGS "51% superalloys" figure is US-only consumption, constantly mis-quoted as the global picture, where batteries dominate.